Halloween

For Halloween this year I couldn't bring myself to buy some tacky dress-up from Tesco for £10 a pop for the girls so I talked them round to choosing something from their extensive collection of dressing up clothes and treated them to a new 50p wand each! I didn't get a good picture of Esther, she was a princess witch, yes there is such a thing! She had this dress on with a witches hat and wand. When I took the picture she had already been to a 'little spooks tea party' at our neighbours house and couldn't seem to keep the lollipop our of her mouth long enough for me to take a decent picture! Eliza dressed up as 'dinderella' of course! Her favourite and I think it suits her so well.

Alice wore an outfit picked out by the girls and amazingly kept the tiara on all night!

Love this little cutie!

On the Saturday before Halloween it was the church trunk or treat activity and Halloween Carnival. Ben was at his brother Sam's stag weekend so I took the girls, we got there late but made it through all the carnival activities and Eliza won the dress up for her age category - she was so pleased, Esther felt it was a win for the team and didn't mind not winning hers. The trunk or treat was a hit with the girls - who wouldn't enjoy collecting free sweets from the boot of 20 cars?! As soon as we had been round we jumped in the car and headed home as it was well past the girls bedtime.

Dissappointingly we didn't get our pumpkins carved out in time for Halloween and they are still sitting outside the front door uncarved (minus the one I used to make pumpkin soup for dinner today...) We are planning on carving them ready for my parents arriving at the weekend but I'm not sure if it really will happen... Our evenings are just so busy this week (and last week). Luckily the girls didn't think anything of not going out treak or treating on the Sunday since we had had the trunk or treat the night before. We went out to an open house on Sunday afternoon for someone from church who flew out today to be a missionary in Australia so by the time we got back we'd missed most of the trick or treaters - now we also have about 50 lollipops which must leave the house soon or I will eat them as I have no self control. We didn't even get any Halloween decorations out as we had a house viewing on the 30th. Turns out he put an offer in on the house 4 doors down who had just reduced its price and had no forward chain. Boo hoo. The good thing is our house has stayed pretty tidy and it's been 4 days since the viewing!

The pumpkins!

When Ben's brother and sis-in-law came to visit we had a pumpkin carving competition though no-one has been crowned yet. The first one is Matt's, he also carved the word 'Beware' in the back but I forgot to take a picture of it: Here is Ben's Storm Trooper, it looked really great, especially from a distance:

This is Esther's - she drew the face then Uncle Dan carved it out for her:

This is Kerri's fab haunted house:

Finally this is my poorly vomitting pumpkin:

Pretty good selection eh?

Halloween

We had a 'trunk or treat' activity at church for Halloween (basically you decorate your car boot and the kids come round and collect sweets from each car!). This is the benefits of having a ward with plenty of Americans! All my English friends had no clue what I was on about when I told them what we were doing! We decorated our boot as a fishing stop and had a big blue blanket decorated with fish, seaweed etc and we had fishing rods for the kids to fish for their treat. My brother-in-law Daniel was hidden in the boot dishing out the goodies! We took our neighbours little girl and all the kids seemed to have a great - who wouldn't with a bucket full of treats! Esther was Pippi Longstocking and you can probably tell her outfit was very basic and whipped up in about 20 minutes (including cutting my finger with a pair of scissors, I nearly cut a chunk off but it is healing pretty well!) Eliza is a little witch - she wore some dress up clothes we already had.The 3 kids ready to go!Eliza was very happy with her outfit!
When we got back from the church activity our neighbours took Esther out trick or treating around our little estate. They came back early than expected after both the girls were scared by some people dressed up in one of the houses. Esther then was scared and couldn't sleep for quite a while and ended up spending the entire time in our bed. Lesson learnt for next year -stick with the church activity and have done! No scary trick or treating! I should have know better to be honest, she was always scared of the people who came round trick or treating previous years. Nevermind!